


Don't Touch That!

by RileyC



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman: The Animated Series
Genre: Canon Character in Jeopardy, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-30
Updated: 2012-08-30
Packaged: 2017-11-13 05:26:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/499987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RileyC/pseuds/RileyC
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is a very bad idea to leave strange devices lying around the Batcave...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't Touch That!

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Comic Drabbles challenge #00: Very Bad Idea.

  
  
Really, Alfred _tsked tsked_ to himself as he tidied up the Cave, anyone would think he had never imparted to Master Bruce the necessity of putting away one’s toys.  
  
After he had stored the batarangs and thousand-and-one other items Master Bruce routinely produced from his utility belt, he reached for an item he did not immediately recognize. It was a box, a cube, with an opaque surface on what he presumed was the top and four honeycomb insets along the sides. As he turned it in his hand, searching for clues as to its purpose, it appeared to activate. He put it down carefully and began to back away as it buzzed ominously; the sound increasing in volume as the opaque surface glowed with an opalescent quality and those honeycombs sizzled with electrical energy.   
  
Alfred had nearly made it to the steps, and with luck well out of range of the device, when it fired off a blast of tightly focused, white hot energy that utterly engulfed him. His last thought was to shout a warning to Master Dick as the young man started down the steps.  
  
***  
  
 _“Bruce, you better come home.”_  
  
He pressed down on the Bugatti Veyron’s accelerator and blew past Harvey Bullock. There had been an uncanny quality in Dick’s voice that made it worth any number of speeding tickets to get home and find out what had happened. Scenarios raced through his head faster than the sports car. Had The Joker broken into the Manor? Was it Ra’s al Ghul? Darkseid? Klarion and a host of demons? If something had happened to Alfred, if Tim had taken the Batmobile for a joyride and crashed it, if the house was on fire, Dick would have simply told him.   
  
Bruce cleared his mind and concentrated on the hairpin curves that led to the Manor. He tore through the gates, tires screeching as the car slammed to a halt and he leapt out of it. He checked for signs of danger as he ran for the door. No fire, no ambulances; nothing at all appeared out of place, in fact, and that only ratcheted up his apprehension.  
  
He let himself in quietly, listened, caught a murmur of voices from the study. Dick, Tim…someone else. Beyond the fact this unknown person was British, Bruce hadn’t narrowed the identity down any further by the time he reached the study door and opened it.  
  
Dick and Tim and another young man waited there. The stranger looked to be about twenty and there _was_ something elusively familiar about him.  
  
Casually, curiously, he asked, “What’s the emergency?”  
  
The boys glanced sideways at the stranger as Dick said, “You know that gizmo you took off Hugo Strange?”  
  
He nodded slowly, beginning to get an uneasy inkling. “What about it?”  
  
“I think we know what it does.”  
  
The stranger—tall, slim, a shock of black hair and an incongruous pencil-thin mustache—stood up then. “They tell me I’m your butler.”  
  
 _“Alfred?”_  
  
“Sir.”  
  
Oh good grief…


End file.
